• Medicine development
• आईआईटी दिल्ली का बड़ा शोध– कोरोना के उपचार में ज्यादा असरदार है ‘टेइकोप्लानिन‘ दवा

Key points:

1. आईआईटी दिल्ली के एक शोध में पता चला है कि कोविड-19 के उपचार के लिए क्लिनिकल रूप से स्वीकृत दवा ‘टेइकोप्लानिन’ एक प्रभावी विकल्प हो सकती है और इस समय इस्तेमाल की जा रही अन्य दवाओं से दस गुना तक अधिक असरदार हो सकती है।
2. संस्थान के कुसुमा स्कूल ऑफ बायलॉजिकल साइंस के अनुसंधान में 23 स्वीकृत दवाओं के संयोजन का अध्ययन किया गया, जिसमें कोरोना वायरस के उपचार विकल्प होने के संकेत मिले।
3. आईआईटी दिल्ली के प्रोफेसर अशोक पटेल ने कहा, ‘टेइकोप्लानिन की तुलना जब इस्तेमाल में लाई जा रही अन्य महत्वपूर्ण दवाओं से की तो हमारी प्रयोगशाला की परिस्थितियों में सार्स-सीओवी-2 के खिलाफ लोपिनाविर और हाइड्रॉक्सीक्लोरोक्वीन जैसी दवाओं के तुलना में टेइकोप्लानिन 10 से 20 गुना अधिक प्रभावी पाई गई।’
4. अनुसंधान में पटेल को एम्स के डॉ. प्रदीप शर्मा की भी मदद मिली। इसका प्रकाशन ‘इंटरनेशनल जर्नल ऑफ बायोलॉजिकल मैक्रोमॉलीक्यूल’ में भी किया गया है। टेइकोप्लानिन एफडीए से स्वीकृत ग्लाइको पेप्टाइड एंटीबायोटिक है जिसका उपयोग निम्न विषाक्तता वाले ग्राम पॉजिटिव बैक्टीरिया संक्रमण के उपचार के लिए किया जाता है।
5. पटेल ने कहा, हाल ही में रोम की सेपिएंजा यूनिवर्सिटी में टेइकोप्लानिन के साथ एक क्लिनिकल अध्ययन किया गया। बहरहाल, कोविड-19 के उपचार के लिए टेइकोप्लानिन की निश्चित भूमिका का पता लगाने के लिए मामूली, मध्यम और गंभीर स्तर के रोगियों के एक बड़े वर्ग पर विस्तृत क्लिनिकल जांच जरूरी है।

(Amar Ujala, 28 September 2020) News Link

• Planning of investment in BHARAT

1. Three top Apple suppliers to commit US$900 million to India smartphone incentive plan – sources

Key points:

1. Three of Apple Inc’s top contract manufacturers plan to invest a total of almost US$900 million in India in the next five years to tap into a new production-linked incentive plan, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
2. Foxconn has applied to invest about 40 billion rupees (US$542 million), while Wistron and Pegatron have committed to invest close to 13 billion rupees and 12 billion rupees, respectively, under the PLI plan, the sources said.
3. It is unclear whether all of the investment will be targeted at boosting manufacturing of Apple devices in India, but the sources and industry insiders said the vast majority would be focused on expanding iPhone manufacturing in the country.

(Channel News Asia, 28 September 20200) News Link

1. Meet the 16-year-old who’s made it his mission to stop the use of plastic straws

Key points:

1. Aditya Mukarji, a student of Gurugram’s The Shri Ram School, is working to rid the world of single-use plastic. His door-to-door campaign led 150 restaurants and cafes in NCR to go plastic-free and averted the use of more than 26 million plastic straws.
2. All single use plastic items, be it straws, bottles, wrappers, sachets, and other packaging material, are made from polypropylene, a material that can neither be degraded nor recycled easily. They keep piling up and have irreversible damaging effects on the environment. Among all these, plastic straws are a common sight in landfills, owing to the numbers used across the country.
3. Aditya decided to act as soon as he realised the magnitude of the problem. The Class 11 student of The Shri Ram School, Gurugram, embarked on a door-to-door campaign in and around NCR to spread awareness about plastic, its detrimental impact, and eco-friendly alternatives.
4. “Its repercussions are evident in our daily lives – from clogging, choking animals, and effects on human health. Sadly, a lot of people are ignorant or careless when it comes to using plastic. So, I was determined to do my bit,” Aditya Mukarji tells.

(Your Story, 25 September 2020) News Link

1. DPIIT shares list of 24 key sectors with ministries for plan to boost manufacturing

Key points:

1. The DPIIT has shared a list of 24 key sectors, including food processing, toys, furniture, agro chemicals, and textiles, with respective ministries, asking them to work on an action plan with a view to boost domestic manufacturing and make India a self-reliant country, an official said.
2. “Each ministry has been sent those sectors to identify their response. What incentives they (sectors) need, what policy tweaking is required, they (respective ministries) should do that. We have given them a preliminary action plan and the ministries will work on that. Each ministry will bring its own policy on these sectors,” the commerce and industry ministry official said.
3. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is working actively on promoting domestic manufacturing of toys and furniture.
4. The manufacturing sector contributes about 15 percent to the country’s economy and the government is aiming to increase it significantly.

(Your Story, 28 September 2020) News Link

• Investment in Bharat by US companies
  • [Funding alert] Fitness startup Oga Fit secures investment from US-based Joyance Partners

Key points:

1. Benagluru-based Oga Fit will be using the funds towards strengthening marketing efforts, content creation, and product development.
2. According to a statement by the company, the funds will be used towards strengthening marketing efforts, content creation, and product development.
3. In February this year, Oga Fit raised $330,000 from Inflection Point Ventures (IP Ventures). Apart from IP Ventures, the startup also counts David Giampaolo, CEO of Pi Capital and Sarva Yoga as its investors.
4. This marks the venture capital partnership’s first-ever investment in an Indian startup since its inception in October 2017. Till now, Joyance claims to have made over eighty investments in companies with a deeper domain expertise in bioscience, neuroscience, food science, and VR/AR.

(Your Story, 28 September 2020) News Link

• [Funding alert] Agritech startup AgroWave raises $500K from US-based investor

Key points:

1. Gurugram-based AgroWave has raised close to $500,000 in funding from US-based investor Sekhar Puli. Started in 2017 by Anu Meena (now 26), an IIT Delhi alumni, AgroWave is working to build sustainable supply chain for fruits and vegetables.
2. The company will use the funds to scale its mobile pickup station model in more villages and it is also building a price prediction model at the supply side for the farmers, for which the company will expand its technology team. Explaining about its prediction model, Anu said in a press release that the AgroWave mobile app will predict a price when the farmers will put a request to sell the produce.
3. AgroWave plans to build more than 50 MPS(s) this year and is eyeing to raise funding of $10 million in the next one year to build 1,000 MPS(s) and utilise it in price prediction engine, smart route mapping, and data driven supply demand mapping systems.

(Your Story, 28 September 2020) News Link

• [Funding alert] Fintech startup smallcase raises $14M in Series B round led by DSP Group

Key points:

1. The funding will be used by the startup to continue enhancing the infrastructure stack, add more investment products and partners to the platform, and expand its technology and product teams.
2. Bengaluru-based capital markets infrastructure startup smallcase has raised $14 million in Series B financing round led by DSP Group along with existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures, Beenext, and WEH Ventures.
3. Founded in 2015 by IIT Kharagpur alumni – Rohan Gupta (ex-Goldman Sachs), Anugrah Shrivastava (ex-Nomura), and Vasanth Kamath, smallcase works with capital market participants (including brokerages, advisors and digital wealth platforms) to offer simple and transparent investment products called smallcases.
4. The platform is integrated with Indian brokers including Zerodha, HDFC Securities, Kotak Securities, 5Paisa, AxisDirect to offer stock and ETF smallcases to their client base. In the last three years, the startup said the number of active brokerage accounts has grown by 2.5x and smallcases have emerged as the primary product offering from India’s leading brokerages for these new accounts. The smallcase investor base has grown by 8x in the last two years to 1.5 million and over Rs 5,000 crore have been transacted in smallcases, it added.

(Your Story, 28 September 2020) News Link

• Life for society

1. Retired Professor’s Plan Helps Make Entire Village Drought-Free in Just 2 Years

Key points:

1. Ashok Sonawane, a retired professor from Nashik, digs trenches with the help of locals in Deshwandi village to make it tanker free.
2. Ashok said things changed in 2018 when he was invited for the lecture on water conservation in Deshwandi.
3. “A discussion started during the interaction with youngsters in the village, in which they expressed concern that the village was facing an extended drought,” he said.The educator said the students wondered how they could get into water conservation when the village received so little water, leaving the area bone dry.“I suggested there could be activities done around two hills that I passed during the visit. I also shared how trenches could get dug to allow rainwater to get stored in the belly of the ground,” Ashok added.
4. After some discussions and another visit to the site, the retired professor and about a dozen youngsters teamed up to experiment with some rainwater harvesting initiatives.“Getting the permissions from the gram panchayat was the first hurdle. After much convincing, we got about 32 hectares of land to dig trenches around the village. The work began with some donations and contributions – like a digger and tools,” Ashok said.

(Your Story, 28 September 2020) News Link

• For the past 75 years, this old man has been teaching children under a tree free of cost

Key points:

1. Nanda Prasty, from Jajpur, Odisha, has been conducting classes for children up to class 4, without fees, after which he urges them to join a primary school.
2. The elderly have been proactive ever since the pandemic began and the subsequent lockdowns that were declared by making contributions, masks, sanitisers and PPE kits for the poor.
3. Nanda Prasty, the man behind this noble gesture, hails from the Bartanda village and has been educating children in Jajpur. He takes classes up to class 4, after which he recommends they join a primary school to continue their education. In the evenings, he also takes classes for the elderly.
4. “I used to work in the farmlands and saw that there were many people in our village who were illiterate. They were not even able to sign their names and could only do thumb impressions. I called them just to teach them how to sign but many showed interest and started to read the Bhagavad Gita. I now teach the great grandchildren of the students of my first batch,” Nanda told
5. “He has been teaching for the last 75 years. He refuses any support from the government as teaching is his passion. But we’ve decided to build a facility where he can teach children in comfort,” the Bartanda sarpanch said,

(Your Story, 28 September 2020) News Link

• Startup in Bharat by Bhartiya
  • Edtech startup Eduauraa is bundling learning with OTT, riding on Ranveer Singh

Key points:

1. Mumbai-based edtech startup Eduauraa wants to make K-12 education as affordable as entertainment. It is riding on a unique distribution model and the brand power of Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh.
2. Enter Eduauraa, an e-learning startup that aims to make education as affordable, standardised, and accessible as entertainment.
3. Founded in December 2018 by a 23-year-old Columbia University alumnus, the Mumbai-based startup wants to take K-12 education to every corner of the country, and “penetrate the 97 percent” that still remains to be tapped. 
4. “Edtech subscriptions are still very expensive in India, ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh. This makes them inaccessible for most of the 310 million K-12 students, who genuinely need online education, but can’t afford it. When we looked around we saw that these people had access to OTT apps like ZEE5, VOOT, etc. So, the question to ask was: Can we make education available the way entertainment is?”
5. Eduauraa provides interactive video lectures for ICSE, CBSE, and the state boards of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu. Its focus is on STEM subjects, and the content caters to Classes 6-10. Lessons in History, Geography, Economics, and Civics are also in the works.
6. Eduauraa’s only revenue stream right now is subscription, with packs priced at Rs 999, Rs 1,499, and Rs 2,499 (depending on the VAS opted for).

(Your Story, 28 September) News Link

• Using a plug-and-play solution, Mumbai startup Near.Store is digitising mom-and-pop stores

Key points:

1. Founded in 2019, Mumbai-based Near.Store set out to enhance India’s mom-and-pop stores by helping them make their offline inventory digitally searchable and discoverable.
2. “Even though ecommerce had gained acceptance and significance in the Indian markets, it was interesting to see that the 17 million ‘mom-and-pop’ shops continued to control over 80 percent of the market share in the consumer goods sector. We saw a latent opportunity in creating a hyperlocal tech solution that could help shop owners use their inherent advantage of proximity to the customers in further consolidating their business,” says Ashish.
3. Once the Near.Store dongle is connected, the device uploads all products that the shop sells onto a dedicated online store. This doesn’t require any additional software installation, electricity, Wi-Fi, or entering any data manually.
4. According to Ashish, the first week post lockdown was the most difficult time. The startup had expanded its sales team in early 2020 and started onboarding shops when the pandemic hit and India went into a nationwide lockdown. The uncertainty of the situation was demotivating for the entire team. But the business model came to the rescue, helping it scale to a thousand stores.

(Your Story, 28 September) News Link

1. खेती के लिए छोड़ी अमेरिका में नौकरी, अब बड़े–बड़े होटलों में जाते हैं इनके उत्पाद

Key points:

1. गायत्री ने महाराष्ट्र में जैविक खेती शुरू करने के लिए 10 साल पहले अमेरिका में नौकरी छोड़ दी। अब वे अपने 10 एकड़ जमीन पर फलों और सब्जियों से लेकर, औषधीय पौधों की भी खेती करती हैं।
2. लगभग एक दशक पहले, गायत्री बोस्टन स्थित पर्यावरण संरक्षण एजेंसी में बतौर पर्यावरण विश्लेषक काम कर रही थी। अमेरिका छोड़ने के बाद जब वह पहली बार अपने फार्म ‘वृंदावन’ आईं, तो यहाँ मुख्यतः एक आम का बाग था, जिसमें सात किस्मों के 500 पेड़ लगे थे। साथ ही कुछ नारियल, काजू और काली मिर्च भी लगे थे।
3. लेकिन आज इस फार्म में आपको अलग-अलग प्रजाति के ढेर सारे आम के पेड़, केला, पपीता, शहतूत, चीकू, अनानास, कटहल, जंगली जामुन आदि के पेड़ दिखेंगे। साथ ही गायत्री मसाले और सब्जी की भी खेती कर रही हैं। हल्दी, अदरक से लेकर काली मिर्च तक वह उगा रही हैं। सब्जी की बात करें तो इस फार्म में कद्दू, टमाटर, बैंगन, आदि की भी खेती हो रही है।
4. गायत्री के फार्म में फसल मौसम चक्र के अनुसार उपजाई जाती है। कीटों की रोकथाम के लिए आमतौर पर साथी फसलों को लगाया जाता है। लेकिन, जरूरत पड़ने पर गोमूत्र का छिड़काव किया जाता है।

(The Better India, 28 September 2020) News Link

• 1 एकड़ तालाब में मोती की खेती से कमा सकते हैं 5 लाख रूपए, समझें बिहार के इस किसान का मॉडल

Key points:

1. 2009 में बिहार के जयशंकर ने 1 बीघा जमीन में 5 फीट गहरा और 15 फीट की मिट्टी की बाउंड्री वाला एक तालाब खोदा। कम से कम 5,000 मसल्स वाले तालाब से सालाना दर्जनों बाल्टी-मोती मिलते हैं। समझिये इनका मॉडल।
2. बेगूसराय के तेतरी गाँव में पले-बढ़े जयशंकर ने 1.5 बीघा जमीन में इकोलॉजिकल खेती का एक अनोखा सिंबायोटिक मॉडल तैयार किया है। इसमें मोती की खेती और मछली पकड़ने के साथ जैविक सब्जी, फल,औषधीय जड़ी बूटियों का वर्टिकल गार्डन, पोल्ट्री, वर्मीकम्पोस्ट और बायोगैस का उत्पादन किया जाता है।
3. भुवनेश्वर स्थित इंडियन काउंसिल फॉर एग्रीकल्चर रिसर्च-सेंट्रल इंस्टीट्यूट ऑफ फ्रेशवाटर एक्वाकल्चर (ICAR-CIFA) के योगदान के बारे में जानने के बाद वह सहायता के लिए उनके पास पहुँचे। मोती की खेती में वहाँ के अनुभवी वैज्ञानिकों ने इस प्रक्रिया के माध्यम से उनका मार्गदर्शन किया और जरूरी ट्रेनिंग भी दी।

(The Better India, 28 September 2020) News Link

1. मणिपुर: 12वीं पास युवक ने बनाया बांस का मोबाइल ट्राईपॉड, मिला अवॉर्ड

Key points:

1. इम्फाल के एक कस्बे के रहने वाले कोंसम रोमेश सिंह ने बांस का मोबाइल ट्राईपॉड बनाकर सबको हैरान कर दिया। जी हाँ, मोबाइल ट्राईपॉड- यूट्यूब और अलग-अलग वीडियो एप पर वीडियो ब्लॉगिंग करने वाले लोगों के लिए ज़रूरी चीज़।
2. 12वीं कक्षा तक पढ़े रोमेश को बांस का क्राफ्ट करने का शौक है और वह बांस से तरह -तरह की खूबसूरत चीजें बनाते रहते हैं। साथ ही, वह अपने क्राफ्ट की वीडियो अपने यूट्यूब चैनल पर अपलोड करते हैं। उन्हें अपनी वीडियो आदि बनाने के लिए ही एक ट्राईपॉड की ज़रूरत थी। लेकिन जब वह ऑनलाइन ऑर्डर करने लगे तो उस दौरान लॉकडाउन था, सभी जगह डिलीवरी बंद थी।
3. बांस का यह ट्राईपॉड प्लास्टिक और मेटल के ट्राईपॉड का इको-फ्रेंडली विकल्प है। रोमेश अलग-अलग हाइट के ट्राईपॉड लोगों के लिए बना रहे हैं। वह बताते हैं कि बांस के क्राफ्ट का काम बहुत ही मेहनत वाला है। सबसे पहले आपको सही क्वालिटी का बांस चुनना पड़ता है और फिर इसे ट्रीट करके क्राफ्ट आइटम बनाए जाते हैं। रोमेश पिछले 3 साल से बांस से क्राफ्ट बनाने का काम कर रहे हैं।

(The Better India, 28 September 2020) News Link